Westminster Theological Seminary is pleased to announce the appointment of the Rev. Julius J. Kim, Ph.D., as the incoming Executive Director of Korean Initiatives and the President’s Professor of Global Ministries. He will join the seminary full-time on July 1, 2024.
Dr. Kim recently served as president of The Gospel Coalition for three years, and prior to that, twenty years as the dean of students and professor of practical theology at Westminster Seminary California. He is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), currently serving as an associate pastor at New Life Presbyterian Church in Escondido, California.
He is the author of multiple publications, including his award-winning book, Preaching the Whole Counsel of God: Design and Deliver Gospel-Centered Sermons (Zondervan).
In addition to his teaching and writing, he has served on the board of several ministries (e.g., National Association of Evangelicals, Covenant College, Peacemaker Ministries) and as an advisor to global organizations, such as Onnuri Church (Seoul, South Korea) and the Lausanne Movement.
“I consider it an honor to join such an historic institution like Westminster that has remained faithful and steadfast to her calling for so many years” Dr. Kim said. “I look forward to serving alongside the many gifted faculty and staff as we train specialists in the Bible to proclaim the whole counsel of God for Christ and his global church.”
After receiving his M.Div. from Westminster Seminary California, he earned a Ph.D. in Historical Theology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. During his time at Trinity, he taught classes in church history at the seminary and speech communications at the college. He also served as a visiting scholar at both Cambridge University (U.K.) and Torch Trinity Graduate School (South Korea). He and his wife Ji Hee reside in Escondido, California, and they have two adult daughters, Emma and Phoebe.
The President of the Seminary, Dr. Peter Lillback writes:
All of us at Westminster are very grateful that Dr. Julius Kim has heard the call to come and help us lead our Korean ministry in its growing global outreach in the years to come! In God’s Providence, he has not only been well prepared to take on this task, but the Lord has opened this door at a time in his life when he is able to take on this strategic role. We welcome him to this exciting opportunity to build on the wonderful momentum that our Korean team has put in place to advance the kingdom of Christ for the glory of God with Westminster distinctives. Please warmly welcome him to his new service for Christ even as we have to our ministry.
In 1929, Westminster Theological Seminary’s founder, J. Gresham Machen, vowed that the seminary would not provide training of the “customary superficial kind,” but rather offer profound, Christ-centered preparation. Today, more than 95 years later, the legacy of faithfulness continues to embolden all that the seminary does.
Today, the expert faculty train students with the insight, conviction, and ingenuity they inherited from our founders. Westminster's distinct, robust teaching method empowers students with exegetically grounded systematic theology, biblical counseling, presuppositional apologetics, redemptive-historical hermeneutics, Christ-centered preaching, and extensive historical theology.